Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen - Surveyor

Surveyor

He joined the great trigonometrical survey of India in 1856 and worked in Kashmir under Colonel Thomas George Montgomerie. He worked around the Kazi Nag, Pir Panjal and Marau-Warwan region. In 1860 he was given a permanent post in the trigonometrical survey and he mapped Shigar and the lower Saltoro valley of Baltistan. He also went around the Skoro La, beyond Skardu and Shigar where he surveyed the Karakoram glaciers: Baltoro, Punmah, Biafo, and Hispar. In 1862 he surveyed upper Changchenmo, Pangong district and the Zanskar ranges which were published in his Notes on the Pangong Lake District of Ladakh (1864).

Although he gave most attention to geology and topography, he also collected specimens of molluscs and birds. He was recognized as a malacologist and served as an early President of the Malacological Society of London, and was also the author of The Land and Freshwater Mollusca of India (1882–87). He was also an ornithologist, writing Birds of Assam (1870–78) and describing a number of birds for the first time, some with Arthur Hay, 9th Marquess of Tweeddale. Most of these notes were published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and he sometimes made illustrations of these new bird species. He was particularly active in ornithology after 1863, when he was posted in the eastern Himalayas as part of the political mission headed by Ashley Eden to Bhutan. He surveyed the Garo, Khasi and Jaintia hills and joined an expedition into the Dafla hills in 1875. Here he described the monuments and customs of the Khasi tribes.

He married Pauline Georgiana (d. 1871), daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Wellesley Chichele Plowden, on 5 April 1861. Pauline died in 1871 leaving their one surviving son was Major R. A. Godwin-Austen. In 1881 he married Jessie (d. 1913), daughter of John Harding Robinson, an Examiner in the House of Lords. He retired as a colonel from the Trigonometrical Survey of India in 1877 as his health began to deteriorate but recovered back in England. When his father died in 1884, he inherited the family estate at Shalford. He however ran into financial difficulties and was forced to sell his collection of birds, about 3500 skins collected in Manipur and Assam to the British Museum. He later lived at Nore near Godalming. He died on 2nd December 1923.

The Karakoram peak K2 in the Himalayas was originally named Mount Godwin-Austen in his honour but his original code indicating that it was the second highest peak in the Karakoram range continues to be in use. The Godwin Austen Glacier was also named in his honour. He received a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 1910.